Designing my first knitting pattern (it's socks)
I never really thought I would design a knitting pattern. And yet... here we are. I’ve designed my first one - and now I want to design more. How did I get here?
If you know me, you know I knit. A lot. There is always a sweater (or two) on my needles. I’m not even sure I ever stopped to ask myself why I knit so much. It started simply: I wanted to make a sweater. When I finished that first one, it was incredibly satisfying... so I made another. Somewhere along the way, knitting just became part of my daily rhythm. I knit with my morning coffee. I knit in the evenings while watching TV, listening to audiobooks, or even reading on my Kindle. It’s just part of my life now.
I’ve always followed patterns rather than designing from scratch. Knitting patterns involve a surprising amount of maths and careful planning - fit, shaping, stitch techniques, gauge - and usually, I’m happy to trust the work someone else has already done. Sometimes I adapt things for yarn or fit, but I always start from an existing pattern.
So what changed? I think it started with the Rosie Sweater, which has a beautiful rose motif. While knitting it, I started wondering whether I could create something inspired by local flora instead. That thought quietly planted itself... and eventually grew into the idea for my Protea Socks.
Proteas are striking flowers here in South Africa - you’ll often see them growing on Table Mountain where I hike. The King Protea is our national flower, and I think it might be one of my favourites (I’ve never officially ranked flowers before, but let’s go with it). They’re bold, sculptural, and beautifully geometric, which makes them perfect for colourwork knitting.
So I sat down, sketched, tweaked, charted... and then it was time to knit.
I happened to have the perfect yarns in my stash: pink and green skeins I had naturally dyed myself. The pink came from avocado pips, and the green from onion skins and black beans. The pink was exactly the shade of a protea petal - it felt like fate.
For the actual sock, I leaned on the "sock recipe" I know works for me. There are countless sock patterns out there, each slightly different, and after knitting many pairs you eventually find your favourite construction. So I cast on, started knitting... and honestly, watching the motif appear in my hands felt magical.
I know that sounds dramatic - it’s just a chart on a sock - but it made me incredibly happy. I wrote up the pattern as clearly as I could, checked and rechecked the sizing, made sure everything worked across different stitch counts, and suddenly... I had a real pattern.
Because Ravelry is where I discover and buy almost all my patterns, it felt natural to publish it there. And now it’s live. My socks are on the new releases page. That still feels surreal. Even if nobody else ever knits them, this has been such a wonderful learning experience. And somehow, I already have more design ideas in my head!
Going through this process has definitely changed how I look at patterns I knit. I always knew designers put huge amounts of work into their garments, but now I appreciate it on a whole new level. And this was "just socks" - so much smaller and simpler than a sweater!
If you’d like to take a look, my pattern is available on Ravelry. You’ll need an account, and it’s priced at $2.50. Pricing patterns is a bit of a mystery to me, so that’s another part of the learning curve.
Thanks for reading this slightly rambly processing of my brain. Will I design another pattern? Yes! I already have another sock idea lined up. Now I just need to knit it. Maybe it’ll be out in a month... maybe two. This designing thing isn’t meant to take over my life - but it’s a nice distraction.